THE USE OF VIRTUAL FORUMS IN THE TRAINING OF FUTURE TEACHERS REGARDING FAMILY-SCHOOL RELATIONS: PROPOSALS AND LIMITATIONS

This paper presents the implementation of virtual forums as a useful tool for future teachers’ training. The active participation of students, the types of assessment developed along the teaching-learning processes, the enhancement of the learning community of each participant and the different interactions that arouse in the didactic processes foster the development of motivation and ownership of students’ learning process. The challenge to analyze and build up best practices for improving relationships between school and family through virtual contributions, mainly developed individually constitute the main aim of this research. Indeed we address some issues of great interest within the European Higher Education Area, such as:
a) Quality in students’ learning
b) Use of Information and Communication Technologies to foster, through forums, the acquisition of an active, interdisciplinary learning from personal commitment.

In this research we offered students the chance to incorporate some of their experiences and look up for references in different educational institution documents to analyze best practices in the family-educational institutions relationship. We stress the importance of this relationship considering the effects it has upon the future performance of the teaching profession. Thus we analyze the contextual favoring and hindering variables in the professional development of both institutions.